Glitch may have compromised personal information of some area teachers

A mistake by the Texas Association of School Boards may have compromised the personal information of some Central Texas teachers and other staffers.

It happened through a TASB website application in late June, but some of the affected school districts weren’t notified last week, including Midway ISD.

School districts across the state submit unemployment data to TASB as part of required reporting to the Texas Workforce Commission.

Officials said some of that data, including names and social security numbers, were visible on the internet.

“TASB immediately took the application offline and began an investigation to determine what had happened,” TASB spokesperson Barbara Williams said in a statement.

Kroll Cyber Security, a forensics firm, was hired to investigate.

“As soon as TASB confirmed which employers were affected, we began the process of notifying them and gathering addresses for the employees to be contacted,” said Williams.

District across the state, many in Central Texas, were affected in some degree including Midway ISD, Killeen ISD, Temple ISD, and Robinson ISD among others.

Midway ISD spokesperson Traci Marlin confirmed, employees from the 2016-2017 school year were included in the data posting.

“All of our employees have been notified of such from TASB,” Marlin said.

Affected employees will receive a one-year membership to a credit monitoring and identity fraud product and were told to call 1-866-779-0497 with questions.

“Additionally, TASB is taking a variety of corrective actions including implementing additional security protocols to the application that caused the problem, conducting a comprehensive review of all electronic resources that contain sensitive information, increasing the frequency and scope of security scans, and expanding security training for all TASB staff,” Williams said.

TASB had had no reports of misuse so far.

https://www.tasb.org/Home.aspx